March 21, 2005

The last couple of weeks has seen us move away from the ruins of Cambodia's distant past, into the horrors of it's recent history, and then on to the commercial reality of it's present...

After the ruins of Angkor we headed for the capital, Phnom Penh, where we plonked ourselves in the thick of it, in a clean, fully-equipped, $10 room. From this vantage point, near the central market, we were able to see the everyday things happening around us from our balcony (or whenever we stepped outside our door). There was plenty going on in this busy and none-too-clean city that gave us food for thought.

One of the icons of this city are the cyclos (a three-wheeled bicycle taxi), and we were surprised to find that this vehicle would serve as a home for many of the guys working them. Once it got late enough, we found some of them stringing up hammocks against a pole or tree. Across the road from us there was a building site which also doubled up as a home for the builders working on it. When work stopped for the day, with little else to do, they would squat down and people-watch from the upper levels of the unfinished building. Based on scenes such as these, it was pretty clear that Cambodia has a few years of development ahead of it.

During our stay in Phnom Penh, we also took the time to learn a bit about the regime that was in place here during the late 70's. We already knew a little bit; basically, that the leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, wanted Cambodia to be a communist state. His plan of achieving this was to take the country back to what he called "Year Zero", putting people back to a more rural way of living, and removing anyone that was a perceived threat.

The logical conclusions of following this, lead to some very dark days for the country. Some of the "sights" around Phnom Penh that hark from those times are very grim indeed. The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek are about 15km from the city centre and was the site of a mass grave where nearly 20,000 human remains were found. It's believed that during the time of the regime, every area would have an extermination camp like this nearby, and it's responsible for the dissappearance of between 1 to 3 million people during a five year period of genocide. There is a monument built at Choeng Ek that contains around 9,000 human skulls found in the area.

Perhaps even more eerie than this was Security Prison 21 (S21), an old school which was converted into a detention centre in 1975. Everyone, that passed through this centre was documented and photographed, and these make up some of the exhibits of the musem that stands here today. Academics, foreign language speakers, doctors, lawyers, and more who did not fit into Pol Pots plan for the country would have been sent here before being sent on to the extermination camps. Some of the classrooms were converted into torture rooms and contained the metal frame of a bed to which prisoners would have been bound. It still sends a shiver down the spine when we think of it...

Obviously needing a change of scenery after all this, we headed to the south coast of the country in search of beaches.

We started off with a brief stay in Kampot, which was surrounded by beautiful countryside and a nice scenic river. The town itself seemed a little like a shadow of itself though; the beautiful colonial houses and wide avenue in the middle of town seem like they have seen better days.

After this, we made our way to Sihanoukville, which is a fairly modern and sprawling, expat-filled peninsula, surrounded by some nice beaches. The main beaches were full of kids trying to sell fruit and bracelets, but they weren't that bad really. We rented a motorbike for a few days, to take us to some of the further beaches, which we had mostly to ourselves.

Following the previous weeks, a schedule of sunning ourselves, and going for some dips in the warm sea water was heaven; and a great way to end our stay in Cambodia!

Hi Kev and Nate!
Cambodia sounds amazing! I so cant wait to go sometime next year! So when are you guys coming to Japan? Must be soon?? Any idea of where you will be, or be staying? Kent and I will try to come and see you! We still have that spare room...... in osaka!!
Look forward to hearing when youre in japan and hope we can all catch up!
See ya soon,
Amanda xxx